"
"I don't understand you," he said quickly.
"You could force him by simply telling him what you once told me."
John Milton drew back, and his hand dropped loosely from his wife's.
The color left his fresh young face; the light quivered for a moment
and then became fixed and set in his eyes. For that moment he looked ten
years her senior. "I was wrong ever to tell even you that, Loo," he said
in a low voice. "You are wrong to ever remind me of it. Forget it
from this moment, as you value our love and want it to live and be
remembered. And forget, Loo, as I do,--and ever shall,--that you ever
suggested to me to use my secret in the way you did just now."
But here Mrs. Harcourt burst into tears, more touched by the alteration
in her husband's manner, I fear, than by any contrition for wrongdoing.
Of course if he wished to withdraw his confidences from her, just as he
had almost confessed he wished to withdraw his NAME, she couldn't help
it, but it was hard that when she sat there all day long trying to think
what was best for them, she should be blamed! At which the quiet and
forgiving John Milton smiled remorsefully and tried to comfort her.
Nevertheless an occasional odd, indefinable chill seemed to creep
across the feverish enthusiasm with which he was celebrating this day of
fortune. And yet he neither knew nor suspected until long after that his
foolish wife had that night half betrayed his secret to the stranger!
The next day he presented a note of introduction from Mr.
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